Protests: Vietnam

/ Iraq, Vietnam, War

Peter Davis, writing from Vietnam in The Nation (posted 3/20/03):

In this country, where a US military attack echoes more loudly perhaps than anywhere else in the world, protesters against the war are expressing themselves from Hanoi in the north to central Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City to the Mekong Delta. At Nha Trang, a resonant place name in our old war, 7,000 people demonstrated yesterday against our new one. The chief sentiment is not support for Saddam Hussein but, in light of the Vietnamese experience with the American military, sympathy for the Iraqi people.

In Hanoi the government condemned the war as "a gross violation of the fundamental principles of international law, including the United Nations charter." Such language is unexceptional in prosperous countries that look at the United States on an almost equal footing economically. In Vietnam, which desperately needs American trade and is urgently trying to attract US investment, the condemnation is an act of courage. Since the normalization of diplomatic relations less than ten years ago, the Vietnamese have worked hard to be friendly to an often indifferent America, and any criticism of the United States is generally muted. The war against Iraq threatens to unravel the meticulously rebuilt relationship.

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American Tragedy

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq

Jonathan Schell, "American Tragedy" (The Nation, posted 3/20/03):

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the cold war ended, the United States was left
in a position of global privilege, prestige and might that had no parallel in history. The moment seemed a golden one for the American form of government, liberal democracy. . . . A basically consensual rather than a coerced world seemed a real possibility.

Times Square news ticker, New York City, 3/19/03Who could have guessed that barely a decade later the United States, forsaking the very legal, democratic traditions that were its most admired characteristics, would be going to war to impose its will by force upon an alarmed, angry, frightened world united against it? . . .

The international order on which the common welfare, including its ecological and economic welfare, depends has sustained severe damage. The fight for "freedom" abroad is crippling freedom at home. The war to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has provoked that very proliferation in North Korea and Iran. More ground has already been lost in the field of proliferation than can be gained even by the most delirious victory in Baghdad. Former friends of America have been turned into rivals or foes. The United States may be about to win Iraq. It has already lost the world.

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Shock and Awe

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq, War

Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post (3/20/03) on the "Shock and Awe" bombing strategy, which he traces to Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade's Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (National Defense University Press, 1996) -- available online. From the book's introduction:

Theoretically, the magnitude of Shock and Awe Rapid Dominance seeks to impose (in extreme cases) is the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. The Japanese were prepared for suicidal resistance until both nuclear bombs were used. The impact of those weapons was sufficient to transform both the mindset of the average Japanese citizen and the outlook of the leadership through this condition of Shock and Awe. The Japanese simply could not comprehend the destructive power carried by a single airplane. This incomprehension produced a state of awe.

We believe that, in a parallel manner, revolutionary potential in combining new doctrine and existing technology can produce systems capable of yielding this level of Shock and Awe. In most or many cases, this Shock and Awe may not necessitate imposing the full destruction of either nuclear weapons or advanced conventional technologies but must be underwritten by the ability to do so.

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Iraq Invasion: The Kurdish Context

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq, War

Gareth Evans and Joost Hiltermann, " The Kurds: a Catastrophe Waiting to Happen ," International Herald Tribune, 3/20/03:

First, it is imperative that U.S. forces get to Kirkuk fast - before the Turks and before Kurdish forces.

Second, the United States must make abundantly clear to Turkey that it has to show restraint, avoiding any unilateral military moves in northern Iraq.

Third, Washington must simultaneously make clear to the Kurds that they should take no action that risks provoking Turkey: that they must refrain from unilateral military steps and consent to a temporary international presence in Kirkuk.

In exchange, America needs to give an explicit, public guarantee to the Kurds that it will protect them from attack (from either Turkey or a post-Saddam regime in Baghdad) and support their fair expectation of greater freedom to govern themselves during negotiations over the future of Iraq, including -- crucially -- an active Kurdish role in the central government.

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Making 1441 a Justification for War

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq, United Nations, War

Josh Marshall (3/18/03) on the United States's hypocritical citation of Resolution 1441 as a sanction for invasion. Security Council members like France, Russia, and China clearly supported the resolution because they were confident that the Council retained the authority to evaluate Iraqi compliance and sanction any further response. What's more, that's exactly what the United States promised at the time. Marshall cites Maggie Farley and Maura Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times, 11/8/02:

U.S. officials said Thursday's concession on the language showed that the United States is genuinely committed to a multilateral process.

"There's no 'automaticity' and this is a two-stage process, and in that regard we have met the principal concerns that have been expressed for the resolution," U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte said. "Whatever violation there is, or is judged to exist, will be dealt with in the council, and the council will have an opportunity to consider the matter before any other action is taken."

The compromise reassured diplomats who have suspected that despite engaging in negotiations at the United Nations, the U.S. will ultimately attack Iraq with or without the sanction of the Security Council. If the U.S. is sincere about involving the U.N., said Russia's ambassador, Sergei V. Lavrov, then the process has been valuable.

"We know the position of the United States," Lavrov said. "But if they say that this resolution is not about an extra authorization, [that] it's a genuine effort to have inspectors on the ground and to fulfill entirely the mandate, then it's quite important."

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How Bush Avoided UN Accountability

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq, United Nations, War

More on the origins of Resolution 1441's ambiguity (Mary Dejevsky in The Independent, 3/21/03):

The White House was divided over the wisdom of seeking international support for this venture, but by August 2002 Mr Bush had decided to take the United Nations route on Iraq. The one remaining question was whether he should call formally for a UN resolution that authorised the eventual use of force -- and then whether there should be just one resolution or two. Only 24 hours before Mr Bush addressed the UN General Assembly, British officials were confident that their argument -- for a single UN resolution -- had prevailed.

Mr Bush makes his decisions, apparently, rather like a diner contemplating a sushi restaurant conveyor belt. He watches as the options are paraded before him, then grabs one that matches his view, and another, and perhaps another, even if they are not necessarily compatible. The 28th draft of his speech was what Mr Bush delivered at the UN on 12 September 2002. The crucial sentence relating to the resolution, though, was missing from his autocue. Knowing it should be there, he improvised, with one crucial error. He called for "UN resolutions", in the plural.

What seemed a tiny distinction took on huge importance in talks over the resolution that became 1441. France and Russia insisted on two resolutions -- one to get weapons inspectors into Iraq; the second to authorise military action, if necessary. That same dispute, essentially, is what finally scuppered UN diplomacy.

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Coalition of the Willing

/ Albania, Europe, Great Britain, GW Bush Admin, Iraq

The " Coalition of the Willing": Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uzbekistan.

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Krugman: First Baghdad, then Tehran?

/ GW Bush Admin, Iran, Iraq, War

Paul Krugman, " Things to Come" (New York Times, 3/18/03):

It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Will Iraq really be the first of many? It seems all too likely -- and not only because the "Bush doctrine" seems to call for a series of wars. Regimes that have been targeted, or think they may have been targeted, aren't likely to sit quietly and wait their turn: they're going to arm themselves to the teeth, and perhaps strike first. People who really know what they are talking about have the heebie-jeebies over North Korea's nuclear program, and view war on the Korean peninsula as something that could happen at any moment. And at the rate things are going, it seems we will fight that war, or the war with Iran, or both at once, all by ourselves.

What scares me most, however, is the home front. Look at how this war happened. There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.

So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come.

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Media Failure in Buildup to War

/ GW Bush Admin, Iraq, Media, War

" In Iraq Crisis, Networks Are Megaphones for Official Views" (FAIR, 3/18/03):

Network newscasts, dominated by current and former U.S. officials, largely exclude Americans who are skeptical of or opposed to an invasion of Iraq, a new study by FAIR has found. of all

Among the major findings in a two-week study (1/30/03=2/12/03) of on-camera network news sources quoted on Iraq:

  • Seventy-six percent of all sources were current or former officials, leaving little room for independent and grassroots views. Similarly, 75 percent of U.S. sources (199/267) were current or former officials.
  • At a time when 61 percent of U.S. respondents were telling pollsters that more time was needed for diplomacy and inspections (2/6/03), only 6 percent of U.S. sources on the four networks were skeptics regarding the need for war.
  • Sources affiliated with anti-war activism were nearly non-existent. On the four networks combined, just three of 393 sources were identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism-- less than 1 percent. Just one of 267 U.S. sources was affiliated with anti-war activism-- less than half a percent.

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